“It cost us one million dollars not to do something about Murray”

What Jumps Out to You?

Real Thinkers

• “The homelessness problem is like the L.A.P.D.’s bad-cop problem”
• “They need time and attention and lots of money”
• “From an economic perspective the approach makes perfect sense. But from a moral perspective it doesn’t seem fair”
• “The L.A.P.D.’s problem was a matter not of policy but of compliance”

Research

• Tracks three individuals for a couple of months through one of the two downtown hospitals (Murray costs 100K for 6 months)
• LAPD is investigated (power law distribution not normal distribution)
• Dennis Culhane → Studies the frequency/length of stay in homeless shelters: Most common length of stay (when he was writing) was one day
• Boston Health Care for the Homeless → 5 year observational study; 18834 Emergency Room Visits, 119 people
• University of California, San Diego Medical Center → 15 people over 18 months went to the emergency room 417 times
• District Attorney in LA → Cabs emit more than their own weight in polution

What would you like to understand better?

• Why is it so hard to fire the 16 cops with 6 or more complaints?
  • “But the report also suggests that the problem is tougher than it seems, because those forty-four bad cops were so bad that the institutional mechanisms in place to get rid of bad apples clearly weren’t working”